Looking Good Dead

  ‘Any good?’ Grace asked.

  ‘A man was calling me from a payphone – he was scared to talk from his home. Then he started worrying about a car parked down the street. He wanted to walk past it, check it out. I have to call him back in exactly ten minutes.’ Branson checked his watch, a massive, stainless-steel rectangle that he liked to show off ad nauseam. It was a Russian divers’ watch, he told everyone, which he had bought from some trendy shop in Brighton. It was meant to be the largest wristwatch in the world. Grace had seen grandfather clocks that had smaller faces.

  They had logged over two hundred and fifty calls from the public since the story of the murder first broke on Wednesday afternoon. All of them had to be followed up, and all but a tiny percentage would amount to nothing. Now with the information about the scarab beetle in today’s Argus – and it would no doubt be in all the nationals tomorrow – the call rate would probably go up, and they would have a much harder time sorting the genuine from the cranks.

  ‘Time waster or real?’ Grace asked.

  ‘He says he thinks he witnessed Janie Stretton’s murder.’

  36

  Grace drove while Emma-Jane Boutwood, smartly dressed in a navy two-piece with a pale blue blouse, sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked Mondeo, with the directions she had printed off the internet on her lap on top of a large brown envelope.

  Normally Roy Grace would have used an hour-long car journey as an opportunity to bond with a junior member of his team, but he had too much on his mind this morning, of which his anger at Norman Potting was just a small part, and their conversation was sporadic. E-J told him a little about herself – that her father had an advertising agency in Eastbourne and that her kid brother had survived a brain tumour some years back. Enough for Grace to get some sense of the human being behind the front of the young ambitious policewoman that he saw in the office. But she got very little back from him, and after a few attempts at engaging him in conversation she took the hint that he wanted silence.

  He kept the car to a steady 75 mph, travelling anti-clockwise along the M25. It was one of his least favourite roads, its frequent heavy congestion causing many people to nickname it the world’s biggest parking lot, but this Saturday morning the traffic was light and moving steadily. After a fine early start the weather was now deteriorating, the sky turning an increasingly ominous charcoal colour. A few spots of rain were striking the windscreen, but not enough yet to put the wipers on. He barely even noticed them; he was driving on autopilot, his conscious brain focusing on the case.

  Janie Stretton had been murdered some time on Tuesday night and it was now Saturday morning, he was thinking. They still did not have her head, nor any motive, nor any suspect.

  Not one damned clue.

  And Alison Vosper had told him that on Monday the supremely arrogant Detective Inspector Cassian Pewe from the Met was joining Brighton CID at the same rank as himself. He had no doubt that the Assistant Chief Constable was waiting for him to put just one more foot wrong, and he would be off this case in a flash, replaced by Pewe, with his shiny blond hair, angelic blue eyes and voice as invasive as a dentist’s drill.

  Alison Vosper would be keen for her new protégé – which was how Pewe seemed to Grace – to make his mark quickly, and there could be no better showcase than a high-profile murder like this, where the existing team was getting nowhere.

  What puzzled Grace most was the savage nature of the killing – the assailant must have been in a total frenzy – yet the absence of any apparent sexual assault. Did they have someone totally deranged, perhaps another schizophrenic like Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, on their hands? A man who heard voices from God telling him to kill hookers?

  Or had Janie Stretton made an enemy?

  Obviously her last boyfriend Justin Remington was a potential suspect, but from what Janie’s father had said, he was a long shot. Bella Moy was a good judge of people – Grace would have a better feel about this man after she had interviewed him, which would be today, with luck, if she could get hold of him. If she felt any inkling of something not being right, he would then go and see the former boyfriend himself. But if, as he strongly suspected, it wasn’t Justin Remington, then who? Why? Where was the killer now? Out there somewhere, about to strike again?

  Last night, after he had been to see Brent Mackenzie, he had grabbed some fish and chips – and a pickled onion – and taken them back to the then almost deserted MIR One. He had washed the meal down with a tannic cup of vending-machine tea while poring over the case notes to date that Hannah Loxley, the team’s typist, had prepared for him.

  He had sat there a long time, staring at the photograph of Janie Stretton’s face, then at the two large whiteboards. On one was pinned a section of an Ordnance Survey map of Peacehaven, with the two locations where her hand and the rest of her headless torso had been found ringed in red. There were also photographs of the body in situ, and a couple taken during the post-mortem, one showing the beetle in her rectum. He could picture, vividly, every detail of them now, and shuddered suddenly in revulsion.

  What happened to you, Janie, on Tuesday night? And who was Anton? Did Anton do this to you?

  His thoughts turned to Derek Stretton. Over 95 per cent of all murder victims in the UK were killed either by a member of their own family or by someone they knew. Was there anything he and Glenn Branson had missed when they had gone to see Janie’s father yesterday? Something the man said that suggested he might have butchered his own daughter? Anything was possible; Grace had learned that much during his years in the force. But Stretton had seemed genuine, a sad father, down and lost. He did not have the aura of a man who had just killed someone.

  The car radio crackled into life. They were out of range of Sussex Police airwaves now and were picking up a Bromley area controller, calling for a car to attend an RTA. Emma-Jane turned the sound down. ‘Almost there,’ she said. ‘Go straight over the next roundabout, then it should be the second street on the left.’

  Suddenly, as if the sky had been saving it all up, a torrent of rain exploded onto the windscreen, danced on the bonnet of the Ford, rattling like pebbles on the roof. Grace fumbled to find the wipers, then got them on, slow at first, then faster; they smeared the rain into an opaque film, and for some moments he had to really concentrate until the screen cleared a little.

  ‘Are you good with insects?’ Grace asked.

  E-J grimaced. ‘Actually, no. How about you?’

  ‘Not crazy about them,’ he admitted.

  He took the left turning she indicated, into a road of 1930s semi-detached houses – not unlike his own street, he thought. At the far end he saw a small industrial estate, beyond which the road went under a railway bridge. On the far side, on their left, were more semi-detached houses, then a busy parade of shops.

  ‘It’s here,’ the Detective Constable said.

  Grace slowed, looking for a parking space outside the shops. He saw a bakery, a chemist’s, and a bric-a-brac shop with old chairs, a toy car, a pine table and some other artefacts spread out on the pavement; there was a medical centre next to it, and a sports trophy shop next to that, and then he saw what looked like a pet shop, its window full of small, empty cages. The sign above the window read: erridge and robinson – importers and suppliers.

  They parked the car in a bay a short distance further along, then ran back through the rain, Emma-Jane holding the large brown envelope over her head, and in through the front door of the premises – which set off a bell with a loud ping.

  The smell hit Grace instantly: a sharp, intensely sour reek, toned down just a fraction with sawdust. They were in a dimly lit area, completely surrounded, floor to ceiling, by cages with ultraviolet back-lighting, inside some of which he could see insects crawling around. He peered into one cage, only inches from where he was standing, and saw a pair of brown antlers twitching. A very large beetle, too large and too close for his comfort. He took a couple of steps back, wiped away some rainwate
r from his brow and gave the DC a What the hell is this place? frown.

  Then he saw the spider, or rather its yellow and black hairy leg, followed by another leg, then another; it moved across its cage in three fast darts. It was enormous; with its legs outstretched and plainly visible now, the thing would not have fitted on a dinner plate.

  Emma-Jane was watching it also; she looked very uncomfortable. Which was how he felt. The more he looked around, the more tiny eyes and twitching antennae he saw. And the stink was nearly making him retch.

  Then an internal door opened, and a short, thin man in his late forties emerged, wearing brown overalls and a white shirt done up to the top button, but with no tie. He had small, wary eyes beneath massive, bushy brows that looked like two warring caterpillars. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked in a reedy voice with a tone that was distinctly aggressive.

  ‘Are you George Erridge?’

  His response was very hesitant and drawn out. ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘I’m Detective Constable Boutwood,’ E-J said. ‘We spoke yesterday. This is Detective Superintendent Grace from Brighton CID.’

  Grace held up his warrant card. The man peered at it, seeming to read every word, his face twitching, his eyebrows going hammer and tongs at each other. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Right.’ Then he looked at the two police officers in expectant silence.

  E-J removed a colour photograph from the envelope and handed it to the man. ‘We’re looking for someone who might have supplied this creature to a customer in England.’

  George Erridge gave the photograph just a brief glance and said almost instantly, ‘Copris lunaris.’

  ‘You import tropical insects?’ Grace asked.

  The man looked quite offended. ‘Not just tropical; European, pan-Asian, Australian; from all over the world, really.’

  ‘You might have imported this one?’

  ‘I usually keep some stock. Would you like to see?’

  Grace was tempted to say, No, I really would not, but instead said dutifully, ‘Yes, I would.’

  The man led them through the internal door he had emerged from, into a shed a good hundred feet long. Like the shopfront, it was lined floor to ceiling with cages; the smell was even worse in here, much more sour and pungent, and the lighting just as dim.

  ‘This is the roach room,’ Erridge explained with a tinge of pride. ‘We supply a lot of these to the pharmaceutical industry for tests.’

  Grace, who had always had a loathing for cockroaches, stopped and peered into one cage in which there were about twenty of the brown creatures. He shuddered.

  ‘One of the most resilient animals on the planet,’ the man said. ‘Did you know that if you cut off a cockroach’s head, it can live for up to fifteen days? It will still keep going back to its original source of food. Won’t be able to eat it, of course.’

  ‘Yech!’ Emma-Jane gulped.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Grace said. Thanks for sharing it with me, he nearly added.

  ‘They would survive a nuclear holocaust. They finished evolving hundreds of thousands of years ago. Doesn’t say much about the human race, does it?’

  Grace looked at him, uncertain how to reply. Then he and E-J followed him through another internal door into an even longer shed. Halfway down, George Erridge stopped and pointed at one small cage. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Copris lunaris.’

  Roy Grace looked for some moments before he saw one of the beetles with its distinctive markings, motionless.

  ‘So, if I might ask, what exactly is your interest in these beetles?’ Erridge said.

  It was so tempting to tell him, and watch his expression, that Grace had to fight hard to restrain himself. ‘I can’t tell you the circumstances, but one of these beetles was found at a crime scene. What we would like from you is a list of any of your customers who have bought one of these from you recently.’

  George Erridge went quiet, but his eyebrows jigged furiously at each other. ‘I’ve only had one customer in recent months. Not much call for them, really; just the occasional collector and new museums – don’t get many of those.’

  ‘Who was the customer?’ Grace asked.

  Erridge dug his hands into his overall pockets, then pushed his tongue hard against his lower lip. ‘Hmmn. Funny bloke, sort of eastern European accent. He rang me ’bout two weeks ago, asking very specifically if I had any Copris lunaris in stock. Said he wanted six of them.’

  ‘Six?’ Grace said, horrified. His immediate thought was Six murders like this one? ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alive or dead?’

  Erridge looked at him strangely. ‘Alive, of course.’

  ‘Who do you normally supply to?’

  ‘Like I said, the pharmaceutical industry, natural history museums, private collectors, film companies sometimes; supplied a tarantula recently for a BBC production. I’ll tell you a trade secret: insects are a lot easier to control than other animals. You want a docile cockroach, just put him in the fridge for four hours. You want an aggressive cockroach, put him in a frying pan on low heat for a few minutes.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ Grace said.

  ‘Yes,’ Erridge replied intensely seriously. ‘That’s what you need to do. They don’t suffer, you see. They don’t feel pain the same way we do.’

  ‘Lucky them.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What details do you have of this man who bought six of these?’ Emma-Jane asked.

  Looking a little defensive, Erridge said, ‘I don’t have any details. I only keep records on my regulars.’

  ‘So you hadn’t dealt with this man before?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you met him?’ Grace asked.

  ‘No. He phoned up, asked if I had them, and told me he would send someone to collect them. He sent a minicab and the driver paid cash.’

  ‘A local firm?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t use minicabs; can’t afford ’em.’

  Grace’s mobile phone suddenly beeped then vibrated. Excusing himself, he turned away from the insect expert and answered it.

  ‘DS Grace,’ he said.

  It was Branson. ‘Yo, old man,’ he said. ‘How you doing?’

  ‘I’m shopping,’ Grace said. ‘Buying your birthday present. What’s up?’

  ‘The bloke who rang me during the briefing – the paranoid one I had to speak to in the phone booth who said he thinks he witnessed information about Janie Stretton’s murder?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Grace said.

  ‘He said he saw it on his computer after inserting a CD he found on a train.’

  ‘Is he letting us have a look at it?’

  ‘I’m working on that now.’

  37

  Looking into someone’s computer was like looking into their soul, Detective Sergeant Jon Rye believed, and he had had more than enough experience to make that observation. He had lost track of the number of computers he had examined in the past seven years – probably quite a few hundred, he had recently estimated. And today he had another one, a Mac laptop, fifteen-inch screen, about a year old.

  He had never yet come across a computer that could hide its secrets from him and his team. Villains of every type – burglars, fraudsters, car-ringers, phishers, paedophiles – all thought they could wipe their hard disks and be safe. But there was no such thing as erasing a disk. The software that Jon Rye had at his disposal could recover just about every bit of deleted data from a disk, and could prise every digital footprint out of every nook and cranny of a computer’s system, however complex, however well concealed.

  At this moment, seated at his desk in the High Tech Crime Unit, which he ran, he was about to stare into the soul of a man called Tom Bryce. And there was no option but to spend the weekend at work because this man, who was a potential witness not a suspect, needed his machine back for work on Monday morning.

  It was Jon Rye’s boast, and it was no idle boast, that within an hour of looking at any man’s computer, he would know more abo
ut him than his wife did. And invariably the computers which arrived in his bailiwick belonged to men rather than women.

  The High Tech Crime Unit occupied a substantial space on the ground floor of Sussex House. To the casual observer, most of it didn’t look any different to many of the other departments in the building. It consisted of an open-plan area densely packed with workstations; on the desks of several of these stood large server towers, and on some the entrails of dismembered computers as well. On one of the untidy shelves, between rows of tilted files, sat a bag of Tate and Lyle sugar. There was a Bart Simpson clock on the wall above one desk, at which Joe Moody, a large, ponytailed man in a T-shirt and jeans, sat intently at his keyboard, logging the images of a bunch of dumber than usual young vandals, who had photographed themselves torching a car they had stolen.

  One section of the room was caged off from the rest – this housed Operation Glasgow, a major child pornography investigation which had been going on for two years and was on the verge of cracking one of the largest rings in Europe. The caging was to prevent cross-contamination of evidence with the rest of the department. Four people were at work in the cage today, and Rye did not envy them. Day in, day out, for the past twenty-four months they had had to spend their working hours looking at sickening pictures of sex acts involving children. Much of Jon Rye’s work involved suspected paedophiles and nothing lessened the anger he felt every time he saw one of those pictures. God, there were some sick people out there in the world. Too damned many.

  The Venetian blinds were drawn shut against the gloomy view of the cell block, made even more depressing by the pelting rain. But at least it was a tolerable temperature in his office today; most days in summer it was far too hot and stuffy, and the damned windows did not open.

  A tough, wiry-framed man of thirty-eight with a boyish, pugnacious face and thinning, brush-cut fair hair, Jon Rye was dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, navy suit trousers and black shoes, the kind of plain, near-uniform clothing he wore to work every day, and it made no odds to him that this was Saturday. These days it had become the exception for him not to work on Saturdays.